Monster Child
by Kimsa Ki-Lurria
Summary: Max remembers Ari's first steps. "If I had known that these would be the first of the few steps that would push him off the deep end, I could have done something." 10 years later, Max comes back to visit Ari's grave. The circle is complete.


Yes, it's Kimsa with another Ari one-shot! While writing this I listened to the song "Time" from Hans Zimmer's _Inception _score, in case anyone's interested in receiving the full effect of the story.

Warning: this one-shot may induce sniffling, Jeb-bashing, Ari-pitying, a need for tissues, and the warmth of a little bit of Fax fluff at the end of the story.

Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride. I don't own Max or Fang or Ari or...sob, anyone! So suing me will get you nothing. And I don't own the quote at the end, since that belongs to the great and wonderful script writers of Christopher Nolan's _Inception_. God, I love that movie.

Enjoy!

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- Monster Child -

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Let me tell you a bedtime story. Gotta warn you ahead of time, though: I don't know any happy ones. First, there's the one with that girl—what's-her-face—who runs around in a red cloak and whose grandma gets eaten by a wolf. Okay. Not so happy. Then there's the one with those two lost German kids, or whatever, who almost get eaten by some cannibalistic witch.

Seriously, who comes up with this stuff?

I can tell you a true story. It's not happy or filled with gumdrops and little cake-eating kids or fairies or anything like that. In fact, it's even sadder than the story of the girl whose grandma gets munched on by a wolf.

But it's true.

Once upon a time—that's how they all start, right?—there was a group of five kids who lived in cages. These kids had wings and were named Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge and Gazzy. They knew a nice whitecoat named Jeb, who took care of them when his partners weren't looking, and who was nicer to them than anyone they had ever known.

He promised he would get them out of their cages and into the free world as soon as he could. He promised they would all live in a big house and never come back to the cages and live happily ever after. He promised they would be together, forever. And the winged kids ate up his lies like chocolate covered strawberries.

This nice whitecoat had a little boy named Ari. He was tiny and blond, with giant blue eyes that I'd heard were as blue as the sky—not that I knew what the sky looked like back then, but I could imagine, and it was great.

Ari was still a baby, barely one year old and crawling all over the place, getting under people's feet. Especially his father's. But Jeb didn't seem to mind so much; I guess he still loved his son back then, and it was only later that he'd start to toss Ari around like a weapon. A weapon aimed at my flock and I.

But…uh, back to the story. Ari was a cute baby and all, and kind of reminded me of a smaller Gazzy whenever I looked at him, but I was eight years old and too preoccupied with surviving each day to pay attention to him. Except one day, he caught my attention.

Jeb was leading me back to the cages with one arm wrapped around my shoulders to keep me upright, and another arm wrapped around Ari, who was burbling into his father's white-clad shoulder. I could tell Jeb was uncomfortable with his kid and wanted to set him down so Ari wouldn't get more drool on his shoulder, but he was too busy trying to comfort me. The whitecoats hadn't been very gentle with me that day.

After he'd locked me away in my cage and made sure I wasn't about to cry anymore, he put Ari down on the cement and tried to wipe away the drool on his shoulder. Ari crawled toward me and wrapped his chubby little hands around the bars of my cage. He looked at me with those giant sky-eyes and said something like, "A-ba!" and then started to hoist himself to his feet.

Jeb was so preoccupied with cleaning his shoulder that he didn't even notice what his son was doing. Ari pulled on the bars and used them as support until he finally made it to his little bare feet, and then he stood there for a second, wobbling. I just kind of stared at him. It wasn't all that often that I got to see something as innocent as a baby taking his first steps, so I was soaking in as much of the moment as I could.

Ari tapped on the bars with his tiny hand and babbled at me again. He looked at me in that expectant way babies have, and then I said, quite intelligently, I might add, "Huh?"

Finally, Jeb looked up from his drool-drenched shoulder. He spotted Ari standing upright and, I swear, I've never seen him look so surprised and pleased at the same time. Ari decided I wasn't as interesting as he thought and turned around to face his father. He nearly fell flat on his face in that simple movement. I reached out and grabbed his baby elbow to steady him before he could go _smack_ on the floor.

"Go on," I told him. "Go to daddy! Go to daddy, Ari!"

He didn't need to hear it from me. He already knew what to do. Ari saw his daddy and so he went to him. Took one tiny, baby step, his first step, wobbled a little bit, and then straightened and took another step. He wobbled some more and fell forward, but caught himself on his hands before I could even move.

Then he was back on his feet and took one more step before his feet decided they weren't up for his kind of exercise, and Ari fell. Jeb lunged forward and caught him before he could reach the floor.

And you know what? I don't think Ari cared that he fell. I don't think he cared that he only made it three steps before he couldn't make it any more.

Because his daddy was there to catch him, and so he just lay in Jeb's arms, and giggled and burbled so much that I still can't believe he was once that innocent.

I got to see Ari's first steps. If I had known that these would be the first of the few steps that would push him off the deep end, I could have done something. I could have stopped it.

But two years later Jeb kept his promise and took me and my family far away to live in a big house, just like he said we would.

He left Ari behind. And this time, there was no one to catch him when he fell.

So the next time I saw him, he had turned into a monster and was trying to kill us every waking minute of his life.

But maybe…maybe the little baby that was the real Ari never went away. Maybe that baby, that child, stayed inside the monster that Ari had become and just never came out. I think Ari was afraid. I think he was afraid of what would happen if he let that child inside him out, because he thought it would leave him vulnerable.

So on the outside he stayed a monster.

But you know what? I think that maybe, just before he died, he realized that he was in my arms and that someone was there to catch him. And I think a little bit of that baby came out again. Just before the end of the train wreck that was his life.

That's my bedtime story. It's not happy, not really, but it doesn't have to be. Because it's his story. Because it's true.

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Max looked down at the baby in her arms and watched as its eyes finally slid shut. Making sure not to jostle the sleeping child, she crouched down at the dirt grave in front of her and gently touched the white flowers she'd set down before beginning her story.

"The end," she said softly. "I'm sorry, Ari."

Gentle hands eased the tension from her shoulders as she rose. Max turned and smiled at her husband, closing her eyes briefly as he planted a tender kiss on her lips.

"Ten years to the day," Fang said quietly, nodding down to Ari's grave.

Max nodded and the couple stayed there for a moment, lost to memories ten years old. Finally, Fang moved to sift his hand through their baby's soft, blond hair. The baby shifted and wrinkled his nose, beginning to cry out for food.

"Come on," Fang said gently. "Ari's hungry."

"All right," Max agreed, and the couple walked away from the silent grave, taking with them their memories and leaving behind their grievances, to begin anew.

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_"You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You can't be sure where it will take you. But it doesn't matter – because we'll be together." _

_- End -_

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A/N: Oh, Jeb. And yeah, they named their kid Ari.

Bleh. I'm pretty sure someone has done something like this before, but this little story's been gnawing at me from the back of my head for a grand total of twelve hours. Finally, I decided to get it out, so here it is.

Please review? 'Twould make me dance circles of happiness.

-Kimsa


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